‘Project Almanac’ Trailer: Today is Better the Second Time Around

After getting bumped around the release schedule for the better part of a year, the found-footage time travel thriller ‘Project Almanac’ (which used to be known as ‘Welcome to Yesterday’) is finally arriving in theaters this January. And to prove it, the studio has released a new trailer, which makes this look like ‘The Sound of Thunder’ for millennials.

The found footage format may be feeling a little creaky after years of abuse by lazy filmmakers, but ‘Project Almanac’ looks like it could pull a ‘Chronicle’ and use this style in a clever way that offers a fresh look at a familiar premise. That familiar premise is this: group of idiots discover a time machine, use it for selfish ends and ultimately disrupt the timeline and cause anything and everything to go wrong. Compare it to your time travel movie of choice (‘Back the Future’! ‘Timecrimes’! ‘Primer’!), but it all ultimately boils down to what Ray Bradbury taught us all those years ago: don't be a careless time traveler. Or, as Homer Simpson once so eloquently said: “Oh, I wish I wish I hadn't killed that fish.”

Ahem. Anyway, ‘Project Almanac’ had its first official screening at this year's Comic-Con, where it was met with mostly positive buzz and we can see why. The trailer may be filled with a lot of typical found-footage tropes, but there's a lot of potential here, especially if things really go as crazy as the footage suggests. After all, what would the process of time travel actually do to a camera? What would that look like? Those are the kinds of unfair questions we'll be asking of you, ‘Project Almanac.’